Mom, wife, girl, not necessarily in that order

Category Archives: family

My parents house is a cute little house. My Mom has it decorated with quirky little nick naks, antique furniture and pictures everywhere. The whole house is just adorable with the exception of… the bathroom. After living in the house for 14 years, the bathroom just got to be too much. It was an embarrasment really, what with the half white half pink tub, brown tiled walls, a lighting fixture that was probably original to their 60 year house. It was dirty beyond cleaning, dark, dingy and just… gross. So, they spent ten days and ten thousand dollars on a renovation that gutted and completely redid their bathroom. And boy, are they proud. Yesterday was our bi-weekly family dinner and the first time that any of us kids had seen it. But really, the best reactions were of my Nieces and Nephews…

3.5 yr old Nephew: Wow!!! Continued to run around the bathroom and touch everything and peer into cabinets.

5 yr old Niece: Oh my!! huge eyes, open mouthed gawking This is so nice!!

A conversation Jason and I had yesterday morning after I asked J if he had got up with Joey in the middle of the night because I didn’t hear him. J confirmed he had, but it only took about 15 minutes to get him back down. Aka, the reason why Men aren’t in charge of tracking baby milestones.

Me: Was he awake, awake, or was he just making noises in his sleep and you went into check and picked him up?
Jason: He was awake, awake. He was just sitting up in his crib kind of crying waiting for someone to come in.
Me: He was sitting up? Why didn’t you come get me?
Jason: Why would I come get you?
Me: Um… maybe becaue it was the first time he sat up from lying down and I’d want to see it!
Jason: No it’s not, he’s been sitting up on his own for a couple of weeks now.
Me: No he hasn’t!!
Jason: Sure he has, he’s done it a bunch of times when he and I are playing on the floor.
Me: ?????

Okay – so, I’ve started to let Joey watch cartoons. They’re not THAT bad, are they? It gives Mommy a few moments of peace a day to do important things like wash the dishes and… er… surf the net ;) I’m not new to cartoons. I have plenty of nieces and nephews so I’m well versed on the who’s who of the Treehouse world. One of the shows I’m not that into, but Joey seems to enjoy (of course) is Max and Ruby. Seriously. Where the heck are these kids parents?

That question is one that my siblings and I regularily discuss (sad, yes) as we try to figure out where they are. You can google Where Are Max and Ruby’s parents and you’ll find a ton of pages dedicated to the topic. People have plenty of theories, some are quite far fetched. We’ve come up with some of our own. Max and Ruby are latch key kids. Alchoholics passed out on the couch. The list goes on. I decided to get to the bottom of it and asked the kids. My Niece responded just with, there ARE no parents and became quite upset when I pushed the topic. Like, she didn’t really want to think too hard about it – they just aren’t there, okay?

Then, I asked my 7 year old Nephew wondering what his thoughts were. He thought about it, seemed as if he’d never noticed it before and finally, after a few moments said “I think that they’re dead”.

I’ve been having a hard time posting. Not for lack of time, but just not wanting to know what to write about. I could totally gush about how great the little guy is, but post after post of that may get a little tiring. Then again, it is my blog so really does it matter ;)

I guess I could write about how he stopped sleeping through the night nearly a month ago. How, before that, he slept through like a champ at the young age of just six weeks. We have plenty of theories on why this has happened. It’s karma for bragging so much about what an awesome sleeper he is and we just don’t understand why other babies can’t sleep as well as him. We wonder if his constant drooling and waking up through the night means that there’s a stubborn tooth that just won’t pop through that’s keeping our little angel from a full nights sleep. Lastly, I wonder if it’s just this sleep regression I keep hearing about and get reassured that he will soon sleep through the night again.

Part of me gets frustrated – I know he can sleep through the night. This waking up at night isn’t consistent, he’ll sleep through for several days and then have a few days where he’s up anywhere from once to three times a night. Part of me wants to buy books on sleep training to learn what to do to help with his sleep, maybe some of these ‘experts’ can shed some insight on what we need to do to help this along. It’s not like he’s waking up to play or because he’s awake. As soon as you place your hands on him in that crib he stops, once you start picking him up his eyes shut again and he quickly curls up into your arms and goes back to fast asleep. It’s not that easy though, after holding him and snuggling and rocking for a bit when we try to put him back in his crib, his eyes pop open and he cries and cries until you pick him up once again.

Some nights, this works. Other nights, it doesn’t. And, to be honest, part of me enjoys these nights. These nights when I’m too tired to try again and I sneak him downstairs and we cuddle up in the big easy chair surrounded with pillows and blankets. It’s these nights when we lie there, cuddling, just the two of us, before the sun is even thinking of coming up and it feels as if we are the only two people in the world where I think that all the sleepless nights are worth it for these few moments.

One year ago today, we loaded up the car, said good-bye to my Brother who was living with us at the time and headed to meet up with my SIL at the cottage. About 15 minutes after leaving, we witnessed the tail end of a very serious accident. Tires screaching, loud thud and a car speeding off, a woman lay on the road right beside our car. My Husband quickly pulled the car over and ran to the woman, calling 911 on the way. My FIL ran behind him to see what he could do, my MIL stayed in the car obviously shaken over what we had just seen. I ran to the road, searching for any signs of the contents of the baby carriage that was thrown a good 20 feet away from the woman.

It seemed like forever, but finally the police and ambulance showed up. The woman was faiding away, it was obvious to everyone around that she probably wouldn’t make it. We were relieved to discover that the baby carriage wasn’t carrying a baby, but rather the woman’s groceries as she was heading home from the store. Nothing else for us to do, we provided our info to the police and got back into the car to continue on our way to the highway. News crews showing up, I called my Brother at our house and warned him that if he heard anything on the news about a car accident, not to worry, it wasn’t us, we’re all fine just delayed with our travel.

We were all upset, of course, it was a pretty silent car ride after that. About 10 minutes after leaving, we were on the highway and on our way to the cottage. We turned on the radio to the local news station for any update on the woman and the news report stated that she was in critical condition and not expected to survive.

At that moment, the turn signal light of a 53′ transport truck started blinking in my Husbands driver side window as the truck moved over to our lane and changed our lives forever.

Within 20 minutes, the chain of calls happened and everyone in my family was notified. My poor Brother, confused, corrected my Mother and told her no, we were fine, he had just spoken to me 30 minutes ago and I assured him that everything was okay and that we were not in an accident.

There are a lot of what if’s from that night. What if Jason had of asked Father drive the first half of the trip. What if I had of sat in the front seat, would I have pulled him out of the way like his Dad did.

Today I went shopping with my Mom, Sister and Nieces. I was picking up some new outfits for Joey (who just turned three months today yet is wearing 6-12 month sized clothing!!) and the girls were picking out a few things for themselves. My four year old niece picked out a cute shirt and had the following conversation with my Mom. It just shows that peer pressure really does begin ealier and earlier.

Katie: Isn’t this a cute shirt? I think Amelia will love it!
Mom: You shouldn’t think about what other people think, the important thing is will you love it?
Katie: looking closely at the shirt Yes, I love it… and… I really think my girlfriends will too!

This weekend found us at my Cousins for a birthday bbq. I plopped Joey on the couch beside my two and a half year old niece to change his diaper. She’s the only one of his cousins that truly takes an interest in him. Upon each visit she makes sure to announce to the room ‘I love Joey!’ at least several times. Changing his diaper beside her, Megan made a very loud revelation to the rest of the room: